Affinity Spaces

Teachers' motivations behind their view on value and adoption of open educational resources (OER) were investigated based on 101 questionnaire answers from teachers in animal welfare, animal science and food science. A factor analysis uncovered the underlying dimensions for teachers' motives and indicated that they were complex and linked to subject area. Underlying dimensions for the motives to adopt OER were identified at three levels; individual (e.g. altruism), institutional (e.g. collaboration with peers), and societal (e.g. reaching beyond borders of the academy). The underlying dimensions for the inhibitors for adoption at individual and institutional level were challenges regarding individual competences, quality assessment and teaching practices. When using activity theory, an affinity space could be identified for teachers in animal welfare with its own norms and expectations with regards to the open educational practices. The results suggested that sharing for the benefit of others and collective collaboration with other peers were stronger incentives for teachers in the specific subject of animal welfare than it was for teachers in broader and less contested subject areas. Animal welfare teachers also had low agreement with problems such as OER being deviant to higher education and for being difficult to adapt to teaching context, and these teachers also had a higher adoption rate than other teachers. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that OER challenges the boundaries of higher education and that an affinity space can enable OER adoption.

Teachers' motivations behind their view on value and adoption of open educational resources (OER) were investigated based on 101 questionnaire answers from teachers in animal welfare, animal science and food science. A factor analysis uncovered the underlying dimensions for teachers’ motives and indicated that they were complex and linked to subject area. Underlying dimensions for the motives to adopt OER were identified at three levels; individual (e.g. altruism), institutional (e.g. collaboration with peers), and societal (e.g. reaching beyond borders of the academy). The underlying dimensions for the inhibitors for adoption at individual and institutional level were challenges regarding individual competences, quality assessment and teaching practices. When using activity theory, an affinity space could be identified for teachers in animal welfare with its own norms and expectations with regards to the open educational practices. The results suggested that sharing for the ben...

En este trabajo se parte de un caso en el que los adolescentes hablan sobre lectura en una red social. Se ha realizado un análisis de 2700 mensajes escritos en Twitter con motivo de la emisión de la película El club de los incomprendidos, basada en la novela juvenil Buenos días, princesa, de la que es autor Blue Jeans, escritor superventas entre lectores adolescentes. A partir del análisis del discurso se estudia el comportamiento de una comunidad de fans de una obra literaria en un entorno digital concreto y se clasifican las interacciones entre los seguidores que emplean un hashtag propuesto por el propio escritor, quien también participa publicando mensajes. Se documenta, asimismo, la creación de un universo transmedia que trasciende las fronteras de la obra, a través del cual los jóvenes obtienen información sobre el producto cultural por medios tan diversos como el propio libro, la película y el discurso de otras personas, incluso el del escritor. Nuestro estudio ejemplifica ta...

This study presents the process of the transformational design of a young adult novel into an alternate reality game (ARG) for educational purposes, creating this way, an affinity space for students. This project adds value since, despite ARGs' prior use in education, the relevant literature does not support the notion of a transformational process of this kind. Design concerns, the primary attributes of ARGs, the standards and driving forces behind successful ARGs, as well as the project's inherent constraints. The project was applied to the Greek young adult novel: Leros' Code by Kostas Stoforos [47] and the derivative ARG was implemented during the 2018-19 school year in secondary education students in Rhodes, Greece as part of a postdoctoral research (ongoing). The project's goal was to examine how an ARG could be compatible with the literary curriculum and the teaching mechanics and even more, how it could promote collaborative learning and literacy practices of the 21 st century. Τhis article presents the transformational design as dictated by the relevant literature and does not include the results of the implementation. Its implementation in an extra-curricular time-zone, as a supervised and coordinated by a teacher activity, deprived it at the beginning of a significant, potential part of the fascination about the unknown and the charm of participating in a real mystery. / Η μελέτη αυτή παρουσιάζει τη διαδικασία μετασχηματισμού ενός μυθιστορήματος για νέους σε ένα παιχνίδι εναλλακτικής πραγματικότητας (ARG) για εκπαιδευτικούς σκοπούς δημιουργώντας έτσι έναν χώρο συγγένειας για τους μαθητές. Η συμβολή της στην έρευνα οφείλεται στο ότι, παρά την προηγούμενη χρήση των ARGs στην εκπαίδευση, η σχετική βιβλιογραφία δεν υποστηρίζει την έννοια μιας μετασχηματιστικής διαδικασίας αυτού του είδους. Σε αυτήν τη μελέτη περιλαμβάνονται σχεδιαστικά προβλήματα, τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά των ARG, τα πρότυπα και τα κίνητρα δημιουργίας επιτυχημένων ARG, καθώς και οι εγγενείς περιορισμοί της. Η εργασία εφαρμόστηκε στο ελληνικό μυθιστόρημα για νέους: Leros’ Code του Κώστα Στοφόρου και το παράγωγο ARG εφαρμόστηκε κατά τη σχολική χρονιά 2018-19 σε μαθητές της δευτεροβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης στη Ρόδο ως μέρος μιας μεταδιδακτορικής έρευνας σε εξέλιξη. Στόχος της ήταν να εξετάσει πώς ένα ARG θα μπορούσε να είναι συμβατό με το λογοτεχνικό πρόγραμμα σπουδών και τη διδακτική μέθοδο και ακόμη περισσότερο, πώς θα μπορούσε να προωθήσει τη συνεργατική μάθηση και τις πρακτικές γραμματισμού του 21ου αιώνα. Αυτό το άρθρο παρουσιάζει τον μετασχηματιστικό σχεδιασμό, όπως υπαγορεύεται από τη σχετική βιβλιογραφία, και δεν περιλαμβάνει τα αποτελέσματα της υλοποίησής του. Η υλοποίησή του εκτός σχολικού ωραρίου, ως δραστηριότητα που εποπτεύεται και συντονίζεται από τον εκπαιδευτικό, στην αρχή του στέρησε ένα σημαντικό, δυνητικό μέρος της γοητείας για το άγνωστο καθώς και τη γοητεία της συμμετοχής σε ένα πραγματικό μυστήριο.

In this article, the New London Group presents a theoretical overview of the connections between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that they call "multiliteracies." The authors argue that the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches. Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how negotiating the multiple linguistic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students. The authors maintain that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the ...

Os excertos de Eduardo Lourenço sobre Thumos de Arrigo e Música para Cordas, Percussão e Celesta de Bartók têm múltiplas implicações, tanto estruturais como de significado. Discutimos o conceito apresentado por Lourenço de 'tempo em reverso', tanto na perspectiva da teoria da música, assim como das interpretações que apresenta, na década de 1960, sobre o modernismo que pareciam tão distintas das interpretações 'clássicas' na arte musical. Tal como Adorno, seu contemporâneo, apresenta a ideia de que a 'música nova [moderna] cintila num instante', a qual é possível exemplificar através dos ostinati nas obras de Arrigo. Estas técnicas, como propomos neste artigo, estimularam em Lourenço o conceito de música que nos leva 'do futuro para o passado', uma música que experienciamos na 'profundidade das nossas origens'. Em Bartók, Lourenço encontra paradoxos, como a 'velocidade congelada', inspirados pela tensão entre a experiência do processo musical e as suas particularidades e implicações estruturais. Debruçamo-nos em três aspectos relevantes na análise musical: (1) como o arco de entradas em quinta perfeita gera uma estrutura de alturas em tempo real multifacetada; (2) como estas relações multifacetadas são detalhadas no 'novo cromatismo' das entradas do sujeito ao longo da fuga; e (3) como as relações, entre os níveis macro (da forma) e micro (do sujeito), evocam construções de classes de altura de padrões periódicos concebidos como fora do tempo (sincrónicos), a que chamamos de espaços de afinidade. Recuperando um paralelismo há muito perdido, partimos de Thumos actualmente relativamente marginalizada, e resistente a formulações contemporâneas da análise musical, e a obra de Bartók agora considerada 'clássica' e não problemática em diversos sentidos, embora continue a revelar relações musicais surpreendentes. Estas obras chegaram a Lourenço, de modo idêntico e modernista, como um 'lugar' de 'incoerência supremamente coerente […] de um universo totalmente deserto'.

Inline with the BSCS 5E instructional model, we are using constructivist learning to teach physics in a heavily modified Minecraft game server. However, not all players like to be creative or are good at it. Because of this, we are creating three inspiration interventions to study their impact on learning and creative outcomes. Our model of inspiration incorporates three of the creativity resources defined by Investment Theory: knowledge, motivation and environment. We report on our current protocol, piloting of the protocol and our evolving methods of intervention creation.

The activity of passive content consumers on social media sites is typically difficult to measure. This paper explores the activity of a subset of such consumers by looking at the influence on Wikipedia pageviews of one large Reddit community which frequently links to Wikipedia articles. The subreddit used in this analysis, /r/todayilearned (TIL), features a large number of posts on an eclectic set of topics, but excludes current events, which helps rule out the primary threat to being able to make causal statements. Wikipedia's public hourly pageview data provides a unique opportunity to study the influence of a Reddit post on a Wikipedia page at different time horizons. We here present analyses using posts from 2012 in TIL, showing that the week in which a post references a specific Wikipedia article is associated with a substantial increase in pageviews relative to prior and successive weeks. We then apply functional PCA to the dataset in order to characterize pageview dynami...

Video games, and the affinity spaces that develop around them, have been lauded as valuable sites for promoting learning as a transformational and intentional process of identity exploration. This research examines how such processes are enacted on a community discussion forum for the space flight simulator game Kerbal Space Program. Public longitudinal data was downloaded from a social network of active forum posters, which was coded for identity exploration constructs as defined by the Projective Reflection theoretical framework. Coding informed the development of two case studies selected to illustrate how identity exploration manifested in two central members of the social network. Findings offer insights into how learning as identity exploration is enacted in game community forums and affinity spaces.

Fan bases are often national or even global in scope with individual members separated by great distances. In the past, it would have been challenging for fans to form communities including people who did not live in the same geographic location, but recent improvements in communications and transportation technology have facilitated their development (Adams 1998). One such community surrounds the Grateful Dead, a North American rock band that had played together for thirty years when its lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia, died of a heart attack early in the morning of August 9, 1995 during his stay at a rehabilitation clinic in Forest Knolls, California (Wilgoren 1999). Today, more than fifteen years After Jerry's Death (AJD), Deadheads still identify themselves as members of a community and are still loyal to the remaining original members of the band, attending performances of the bands they comprise such as Furthur, Phil and Friends, Ratdog, the 7 Walkers, and the Mickey Hart Band. From the vantage point of almost two decades AJD, it is clear that both the remaining members of the band and Deadheads have contributed to the persistence of this community, but that not all Deadheads participate in it actively and not all Deadheads who do participate in it do so in the same ways. The ways in which Deadheads contributed to the persistence of their community after Jerry's death thus provides the focus of this case study of how fan communities deal with such a change.

TWITTER CHAT, by LESLEY PENDLETON, was prepared under the direction of the candidate's Dissertation Advisory Committee. It is accepted by the committee members in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree, Doctorate of Education, in the College of Education and Human Development, Georgia State University. The Dissertation Advisory Committee and the student's Department Chairperson, as representatives of the faculty, certify that this dissertation has met all standards of excellence and scholarship as determined by the faculty.

Creating, sharing, and critiquing user-generated content are increasingly common practices in online environments, as users become active producers, reviewers, and promoters, not just consumers, of content. This paper investigates the functions of the opening posts in an online discussion forum dedicated to user-generated game levels (i.e., mini-games) designed with the LittleBigPlanet digital game series. In the analyzed community, the first post of each thread plays a crucial role, as authors introduce themselves, present their work, and set the stage for discussion. Findings show that the opening post carries a variety of discursive functions: it serves as a creative presentation of content, a self-reflective disclosure of practices, and a passionate call to participation. Moreover, by artfully using these themes, participants construct the opening post as a "request for absolution." Through an ethnographic discourse analysis approach that draws on politeness theory, this study furthers the understanding of how users discursively construct and seek to increase opportunities for interaction, peer feedback, and social learning in a creative online space.

The study begins with a historical exploration of the early forms of commercialisation in football societies from the late 19th century onwards. It then examines the changing face of football and its adaptation in the context of the sports industry and offers a critical reflection on the process of hyper-commercialisation of global football and the ways in which local or national football cultures and identities are adapting to or resisting the new context. The article concludes with an analysis of the prevailing tensions within football's lifeworlds between the increasing pressures of the sports industry for profit, competition and efficiency and the valorisasion of football as a matter of identity, conviviality and passion.

Despite research establishing emojis as sites of critical racial discourse, there is a paucity of literature examining their importance in the increasingly popular context of mobile payments. This is particularly important as new forms of social payment platforms such as Venmo bridge the seamlessness of mobile payments with the vibrant communicative practices of social networks. As such, they provide a unique medium to examine how emojis are used within the context of digital consumption, and by extension, self-representation. This study analyzes approximately 325 million public transactions on the U.S. payment platform Venmo to understand whether emoji usage in mobile payments is more hedonic or utilitarian. We then explore how race is represented across emoji usage on Venmo via tone-modified emojis, a subset of emojis whereby users can choose a skin tone. We found that while emojis in general are used for more hedonic purposes than utilitarian ones, darker tone-modified emojis ind...

El educomunicador, mediador de la co-construcción de discursos literarios multimodales, es clave para desarrollar una estrategia efectiva para involucrar a los estudiantes en el mundo de la literatura. Éste posee la competencia de transformar a la convergencia y a la hipercomunicación como aliadas, permitiendo la gestión de la constante fuente creciente-vertiginosa de la información. Este ensayo explorará cómo las perspectivas de Carlos Scolari y Geneviève Jacquinot-Delaunay, pueden enriquecer la enseñanza de la literatura en un contexto educativo. Además, se destacará el papel crucial de los videojuegos como herramienta de incentivo para fomentar el amor por la literatura, basándonos en los principios esenciales expuestos por el Dr. Óliver Pérez Latorre en su entrevista.

Multiliteracies has been a key concept in the field of education worldwide, inspiring new ways of teaching and learning. In my disciplines for undergraduate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student teachers in a public Brazilian university, I have worked with the theoretical and pedagogical framework of the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies and Learning by Design (LbD) as a repertoire of practices, which are increasingly important for participation in communities and work and academic life in our globalized world. These practices revolve around three main ideas: critical thinking, enhanced reading skills, and teacher professionalism. In this article, I discuss these three main domains of practice and give examples of how I have used LbD knowledge processes to promote relevant learning experiences for my student teachers. I believe that if teachers are expected to be able to develop their students' critical thinking, multimodal skills, and abilities to "think out of the box," to negotiate meanings, and to participate in teamwork, they need to have these skills developed first in their own process of teacher education. In this sense, as a repertoire of practices, multiliteracies and LbD play an important role in teacher education.

La tecnología ha cambiado la literatura, su producción y su distribución sin limitarla a recursos tradicionales y utilizando nuevos medios como las plataformas digitales. El portal Wattpad es la red social más popular en el mundo con fines de lectura y escritura. Es la fuente de los best-sellers de literatura juvenil actual en su formato de literatura por entregas. Pero, ¿qué es la literatura por entrega y cuáles son las diferencias con Wattpad? ¿Cómo utilizar Wattpad como escritor? Esas son algunas de las preguntas que este estudio responderá para demostrar los beneficios que obtienen tanto lectores, autores y editoriales que busquen nuevas opciones que llamen la atención de un público mucho más joven y con nuevas exigencias. 

Teachers' motivations behind their view on value and adoption of open educational resources (OER) were investigated based on 101 questionnaire answers from teachers in animal welfare, animal science and food science. A factor analysis uncovered the underlying dimensions for teachers’ motives and indicated that they were complex and linked to subject area. Underlying dimensions for the motives to adopt OER were identified at three levels; individual (e.g. altruism), institutional (e.g. collaboration with peers), and societal (e.g. reaching beyond borders of the academy). The underlying dimensions for the inhibitors for adoption at individual and institutional level were challenges regarding individual competences, quality assessment and teaching practices. When using activity theory, an affinity space could be identified for teachers in animal welfare with its own norms and expectations with regards to the open educational practices. The results suggested that sharing for the ben...

Digital games hold out great potential for human development. There is no reason to think about games simply as “fun. ” At the same time, there is no reason to equate learning with being “serious. ” Games and learning, at their best, engage humans at a deep level of pleasure (Gee 2005). Play and learning are primordial human urges. Unfortunately, we have come to take it for granted that adulthood will kill play and schools will kill learning as a human pleasure. These assumptions are particularly dangerous in the twenty-first century.

A significant body of research points to the benefits of empathy for young people’s personal, social, and educational development. However, some research indicates that youth empathy levels are declining. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to research empathy in education during times of global crisis and local educational disruption. This study explored Australian English teachers’ beliefs, pedagogical approaches, and experiences in relation to teaching with, for, and about empathy, including during the pandemic. Drawing from a state-wide survey and representative teacher case studies, this study revealed a couple key findings. First, the majority of participants recognised the value of empathy for student learning and engagement; however, teachers disagreed on whether empathy impacts academic performance. Second, teachers tended to avoid teaching explicitly about empathy because they felt it was not prescribed in the English Syllabus. Each of these findings wa...

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich im Kontext der schulischen Arbeit mit Tablets mit der Entgrenzung von arbeitsverwiesenen und privaten Lebenskontexten in Lehrpersonenkollegien. Es geht hierbei um den nicht unbedingt intendierten Aspekt einer erheblichen Ausweitung der beruflichen Verfügbarkeit, der in der medienpädagogischen Forschung bisher kaum berücksichtigt worden ist. Dabei stellt die Analyse die Frage in den Mittelpunkt, wie und nach welchen Normen dieses Entgrenzungsphänomen in Lehrpersonenkollegien handelnd erzeugt wird. Um das Thema grundlagentheoretisch einzuordnen, greift die Argumentation auf den Mediatisierungsansatz aus der Kommunikationswissenschaft zurück. Der Beitrag nutzt anschliessend einige Ideen aus der Schulkulturtheorie (Helsper et al.), die als Ausgangspunkt dienen, um die soziale Aushandlung des Entgrenzungsphänomens empirisch greifbar zu machen. Beide Theorielinien werden miteinander verknüpft und schaffen so ein theoretisches Fundament für die Auswertung. Entl...

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Lourenco’s fragments about Arrigo’s Thumos and Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta are richly implicative. We discuss what Lourenco calls ‘time in reverse,’ both from a music theory perspective and as to how his 1960s interpretations of modernism seemed so distinct from interpretations of the ‘classical’ in art music. Like his contemporary Adorno, he offers the image of ‘new music lighting up on the spot’, Arrigo’s ostinati being compositional examples. Techniques of that kind, we propose, stimulated Lourenco’s concept of music taking us ‘from future to past,’ music in which we live in ‘the abyss of our beginnings.’ In the Bartok, Lourenco finds paradoxes, such as ‘frozen velocity,’ that are inspired by the tension between the experience of musical process and its structural conditions and implications. We focus on three pertinent music‑analytical aspects: (1) how the arch design of perfect‑fifth entries creates a real-time, multivalent pitch structure; (2) how these ...

In this article, we explore how the reading and writing of poetry can be a form of critical hope within secondary English teacher education courses, and across our experiences as English teachers. We begin by discussing a particular moment from our secondary English teacher education course, where one of our teacher interns prompted us to respond thoughtfully about the ways we have enacted critical hope by asking, "How do I teach with hope?" From this moment, we share five vignettes of how as former teachers and current teacher educators, we each read and taught with poetry and the ways these moments evoked possibilities for how we might trace the contours of critical hope through a deeper engagement of the relational and poetic within teaching.

This dissertation shares the results of a study of the community of the mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go. It also serves to build on and expand the framework of Distributed Teaching and Learning (DTALS), which here is used as a framework through which to explore the game's community (Gee & Gee, 2016; Holmes, Tran, & Gee, 2017). DTALS serves to expand on other models which examine learning in out-of-school contexts, and in particular on the connections between classroom and out-of-school learning, which numerous scholars argue is of critical importance (Sefton-Green, 2004; Vadeboncoeur, Kady-Rachid, & Moghtader, 2014). This framework serves to build bridges as well as fill gaps in some key literature on learning in out-of-school contexts, including connected learning (Ito et al., 2009), participatory culture (Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robison, 2009), learning ecologies (Barron, 2006), and affinity spaces (Gee, 2004; Gee & Hayes, 2012). The model also focuses on teaching in addition to learning in and across informal contexts. While DTALS can be used to examine any number of phenomena, this dissertation focuses on the community around Pokémon Go. The game, with its emphasis on geography and community, presents unique opportunities for research. This research draws on existing video game research which focuses on not only games but their communities, and in particular the learning and literacy activities which occur in these communities (Gee & Hayes, 2012; Hayes & Duncan, 2012; Squire, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006). The results here are presented as three separate manuscripts. Chapter Two takes a broad view of a local community of players, and discusses different player types and how v

En este trabajo se parte de un caso en el que los adolescentes hablan sobre lectura en una red social. Se ha realizado un análisis de 2700 mensajes escritos en Twitter con motivo de la emisión de la película El club de los incomprendidos, basada en la novela juvenil Buenos días, princesa, de la que es autor Blue Jeans, escritor superventas entre lectores adolescentes. A partir del análisis del discurso se estudia el comportamiento de una comunidad de fans de una obra literaria en un entorno digital concreto y se clasifican las interacciones entre los seguidores que emplean un hashtag propuesto por el propio escritor, quien también participa publicando mensajes. Se documenta, asimismo, la creación de un universo transmedia que trasciende las fronteras de la obra, a través del cual los jóvenes obtienen información sobre el producto cultural por medios tan diversos como el propio libro, la película y el discurso de otras personas, incluso el del escritor. Nuestro estudio ejemplifica ta...

Abstract: This paper considers the relation between literacy, social media practices and rhetoric, by focusing on game-related spaces as sites for learning. Studies from various disciplinary research domains like anthropology (eg Ito and Bittanti 2010) and socio-linguistics (eg Gee 2003) connect games and learning. Gee (2003) provocatively claims that games can be considered more powerful learning environments than traditional education. He attributes several learning principles to gaming, thereby also calling attention to affinity ...

Following observations and interviews with transnational children that have one or more years of school in the United States and are now in school in Mexico, it was determined that the Mexican public school system has no mechanism in place to offer them the support they need. Therefore, I collaborated with Mexican university students to seek solutions to the challenge of meeting transnationals' language needs. Specifically, I implemented community-based service-learning in which university students met one-on-one with transnational students. Community-based projects, like the one described here, offer future teachers and other university students the opportunity to apply what they are learning in the classroom so that their own learning is enhanced in ways it otherwise would not be. Furthermore, help is extended to younger learners who benefit from one-on-one or small group linguistic support.

This paper investigates the alternative applications of vernacular terminology through video game texts and paratexts within fandom communities. The focus is on the use of expressions adopted from the language of video game within online communities that orbit around groups of streamers. The research focuses on their activity within the game live streaming platform Twitch.tv and, in particular, on the cluster of Italian streamers known as Tomodachi CrewFormally established in November 2020, Tomodachi Crew proposes a typology of entertainment focused on video games, anime, and manga: The community and the streamers of Tomodachi Crew apply terminologies and languages typical of the products of popular culture mentioned above to their activity on Twitch. Specifically, one of the characteristic aspects is the transformation of the English term lore into a true creative-narrative tool employed by the community fandom. Derived from folklore, the expression indicates the set of knowledge a...

En esta tesis presento los resultados y conclusiones de un estudio de casos múltiple que se realizó principalmente en línea dentro de la comunidad artística deviantART.com. El principal objetivo de este estudio fue identificar los eventos y prácticas de literacidad de tres usuarios del sitio, así como considerar los aprendizajes reconocidos, analizar cómo participan y qué identidades despliegan en esas prácticas.

Social Studies Teachers’ Use of Twitter and #edchats for Collaboration by Eric Langhorst MA, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, 2001 BS, University of Nebraska—Kearney, 1994 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University June 2015 Abstract Past studies have indicated that teachers in the United States have limited opportunities to collaborate with peers; this limitation has been found to be particularly problematic for social studies teachers. An increasing number of educators are using the social media application Twitter to collaborate. Little research exists concerning social studies teachers’ use of #edchats, a weekly recurring Twitter session. The focus of this qualitative case study was the collaboration that exists among social studies teachers participating in Twitter edchats. The theoretical framework was communities of practice. Transcripts of 10 edchat sessions in 2013 were coded with an a priori st...

The project 'Multimedia in science teaching: five years of research and teaching in Portugal' was successful in featuring the national research on multimedia in science education and in providing the community with a simple reference tool-a repository of open access scientific texts. The current work aims to describe the theoretical background that may allow creating and sustainably developing an online community on science teaching. The community should be capable of appropriating and generating scientific peer review and validation processes, which would allow reflections on teaching practices in science areas using information and communication technologies (ICT) and improvements from a participatory science perspective. Through an action-research process, the current platform is being adjusted in the sense of implementing strategies able to attract and engage an interested public and progressively to create a community of peers. The project is particularly relevant with respect to the gap between academic production and pedagogical practice and the avenues that it opens for comparing affinity spaces across different locations and domains of interest.

This paper presents a study of the current First Language (L1) Curriculum in Compulsory Education (Preschool, Primary School and Junior High School) in Greece. Specifically, we examine the extent of the Curriculum's modernisation, in the framework of new language-teaching ...

Research has shown that the book review is part of a core of school text repertoire, and that it is characterized by particular blocks of information. Young readers also write book reviews outside the school context and post these texts online. This study focuses 50 book reviews in Swedish, written by readers age 9-20 outside the school context and posted online. The blocks of information have been mapped, showing that the plot, the characters and the evaluation are predominant among these young readers. However, in the reviews readers are often addressed directly, and the reviewer uses the affinity space provided by the digital environment, both to establish interaction with the readers and to position the young reader as an engaged and competent critic. The established genre conventions are observed to varying degrees, in particular the use of terminology with a bearing on narratives. Paratextual elements such as photos of book covers, quotes, links and spoiler warnings occur in many book reviews in the material. Three theoretical concepts are used in this article to analyse and understand young readers' online book reviews: James Paul Gee's concept of affinity space, Basil Bernstein's concept of horizontal and vertical discourse, and Gérard Genette's concept of paratext. The result shows that the book review may still, in essence, be an imitation genre, as the young readers use the blocks of information common to the genre conventions learnt at school or by reading professional reviews. The digital environment has, however, had an impact. Not only does the Internet provide an arena for the young readers to act as critics, it also provides the young reviewer with national and international models, possibilities of interaction, and paratextual material to borrow. The young readers have capitalized on the possibility to position themselves as readers and critics.

Examining the beginning of an online forum discussion on Pokémon, the poster introduces objective hermeneutics, developed by German sociologist Ulrich Oevermann (2000), as a methodology to analyze learning in game-based online affinity spaces (Gee, 2005).

Gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender, questioning/queer, and ally (GBLTQA) programming and spaces at predominately White universities often struggle to meet the needs of GBLTQA students of color. Findings from questionnaire results, interviews, and focus groups demonstrate many of the factors that prevent GBLTQA programming and spaces from increasing inclusion. The main goal of this research is to explore the current problems that exist in terms of race in the Wright State University GBLTQA campus community. I will then discuss strategies that GBLTQA organizations and higher education administrators can employ to increase representation of GBLTQA students of color in programming, resources, and spaces.

Some research suggests that a significant number of Generation Z teenagers (those born in the late 1990s or early 2000s) display an insufficient level of information literacy (IL) to function effectively in an information-based society. Yet many of them are gamers who succeed at accomplishing game-related tasks that require a number of IL skills such as information seeking, the critical assessment of sources and relevance ranking of information. This paper describes the results of an interpretive case study of the information behaviours of teenage gamers that supports the hypothesis that the online game Minecraft supports the development of such IL skills. The online interactions of 510 participants of a public discussion forum on Minecraft and interviews from eight teenage Minecraft gamers, as well as the game itself, were analysed. This study suggest that some aspects of Minecraft’s design effectively induce players to seek out gamerelated information in affinity spaces (online in...

This article proposes the study and analysis of the state-of-the-art in video game panorama, focusing on the tendency to use hate speech among young players. The immersion of the player in the symbolic arena of the game, where everything becomes possible, raises questions about the relationship between video games in the virtual world, and the player's behavior in the physical world. It is shown that anonymity and the creation of communities and game groups can lead to the exclusion of and attacks to minorities; chat communications can facilitate sharing interests and game techniques as well as insults in times of tension between players, leading to imperative reflection on the role of gaming platforms in the control of shared content. Considering the boundless possibilities of video games, this article also reflects on game literacy and on how games have the potential to become powerful learning tools.

Creating, sharing, and critiquing user-generated content are increasingly common practices in online environments, as users become active producers, reviewers, and promoters, not just consumers, of content. This paper investigates the functions of the opening posts in an online discussion forum dedicated to user-generated game levels (i.e., mini-games) designed with the LittleBigPlanet digital game series. In the analyzed community, the first post of each thread plays a crucial role, as authors introduce themselves, present their work, and set the stage for discussion. Findings show that the opening post carries a variety of discursive functions: it serves as a creative presentation of content, a self-reflective disclosure of practices, and a passionate call to participation. Moreover, by artfully using these themes, participants construct the opening post as a "request for absolution." Through an ethnographic discourse analysis approach that draws on politeness theory, this study furthers the understanding of how users discursively construct and seek to increase opportunities for interaction, peer feedback, and social learning in a creative online space.

As a group, we want to endorse the process of students and faculty writing together. We found that thinking through problems of expression, organization, and argument made our thinking visible to one another, a move that makes possible collaborative thinking, timely feedback, and meaningful revision-an invaluable process for teachers of writing at any level. Collaborative work also troubled old and persistent divisions between novice student and expert teacher. When writing with students, faculty have opportunities to intentionally model teacher thinking and critical reflection, but also to learn from and respond to student feedback. Students, likewise, contribute meaningfully to professional dialogue, and, through this process, begin seeing themselves as learning professionals in a community. In short, faculty learn and students teach. Our work below describes how we, as faculty and students, use Twitter in our English teacher education program. While our focus is on Twitter, we want to note at the outset that Twitter is merely one social media and composing tool, among many others, that helps teachers build knowledge and participate meaningfully in a professional community. Readers interested in learning more about how teachers develop identity and acquire expertise will also find this work of interest.

Table S1. Selected loci used for genotyping Toxoplasma gondii isolates obtained from brains of infected sea otters (n=135) in California between 1998-2015.; Table S2. Univariable analysis for risk factors associated with sea otter (n=116) deaths due to Toxoplasma gondii infection as a primary cause.; Table S3. Univariable analysis for risk factors associated with presence of Type X RFLP Toxoplasma gondii genotype in sea otters (n=135).

Most of the previous research has focused on gendered or racial representations in either game playing or making contexts. In this paper, we adopt an intersectional perspective by examining gender and race identity representations and constructions within Minecraft, a sandbox game, popular with millions of youth. Our research focuses not only on game play and construction but also examines gender and racial representations within the larger metagaming community, in particular online YouTube video postings and a public gaming convention. In the discussion, we address gender, race, and intersectional identity representation across Minecraft's ecology in how these representations on and offline are influenced by and impact youth gamers along with ways to prevent Minecraft from becoming an exclusionary space.